Binning PSR off in favour of a 'luxury tax' would be the death knell for competition in the Premier League

It should come as little surprise that the rallying cry from some clubs to the PSR fiascos of this season should be to just let the richest do what they like.

Regarding the Premier League’s Profit & Sustainability Rules, there is one thing upon which more or less everybody agrees; change of some sort needs to come. But if there are ‘good solutions’ and ‘bad’ solutions to what has really been a car crash of a season in terms of the League’s financial competence, those that the Premier League is now being rumoured to bring in are probably just about the worst that they could bring in.

According to a report from Mike Keegan in the Daily Mail, Premier League clubs going be set to do away with any notions of ‘financial fair play’, and instead will bring in a ‘luxury tax’, in which clubs have to pay a levy if they spend over a set amount, with that amount being distributed among the division’s other clubs as compensation.

It is a dismal idea which essentially signs over the Premier League title to the richest in perpetuity. It is an admission of defeat on the part of the League that they can maintain so much as a semblance of competitive balance. There have been some galaxy-brains trying to make an argument that this will make the smaller clubs more competitive, which is so absurd as to almost be beyond belief.

If this tax was set at, say, 10%, the owners of the richest clubs would simply treat it as a 10% tax in return for unlimited spending. If it was set at double that, they might accept that, too. Because if you have effectively bottomless pockets it doesn’t really matter, does it? If you wanted to reduce the Premier League to a one or two horse race, this would be just about the best way to do it.

Once again for those at back: unfettered capitalism doesn’t aspire to competition. Unfettered capitalism uses competition as a device to get to its true aspiration, private monopoly, while ensuring that a very small number of people do very nicely out of every step of the process. That’s why it has to be regulated. It’s also why the ultra-wealthy always want less regulation.

How much support this notion has outside of the sporting arms of the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s governments is unknown. But if less wealthy Premier League clubs were to agree to it, they would be signing away any remaining realistic chance of ever being able to compete. Even if, say, £500m was raised from the ultra-wealthy in fines and distributed to, say, 15 other clubs, that would only be £33.3m per club.

Meanwhile, that top five would have walked away with £5bn’s worth of players and no, nowhere near all of that sort of money would be spent in the Premier League. The idea that a tax on player sales plus the revenues from those sales within the Premier League could support both transfer fees and wages for the rest of the Premier League just doesn’t even make any sense.

Elsewhere in the Mail’s report, we may get to something close to the kernel of why the League would want to reopen the gates to football’s financial wild west. “There are also grave fears are [sic] that, under its current guise, PSR will see the Premier League fall from its lucrative position as the world's best league because it will no longer be able to afford the best players on the best salaries”, which seems like a similarly absurd idea.

Six Premier League clubs feature in the top ten in the Deloitte Football Money League 2024. They make up fourteen of the top thirty. The extent to which the Premier League already has an advantage over every other League in Europe. This is not a league that is showing any signs of falling from any perches at present, to the extent that it’s not an uncommon view elsewhere in Europe that a Super League already exists, only it’s situated in England.

This is all still at the discussion stage, and it is worth noting that the Mail has occasionally given the impression of being a ‘supporter’ of the owners of both Newcastle and Manchester City. And with this still being at the discussion stage, can they please find the time to talk about a hard cap on salaries and wages only? This would be fair, would save clubs from themselves while allowing owners to spend, and would prevent the richest from sailing off unfettered into the distance.

UEFA’s FFP rules, which tie club spending to a proportion of annual revenue, seem likely to more or less calcify European club competitions. The Premier League, it would seem, want to go even further in that same direction. “UEFA’s new rule - which limits spending on player and coach wages, transfers and agent fees to 70 per cent of club revenue is also viewed favourably by some”, says the Mail. It’s not difficult to imagine who they might be.

Of course, with modern football being modern football, it didn’t take too long for a conspiracy theory to emerge, that this was the Premier League finding a way to weasel out of having to fire Chelsea and/or Manchester City out of a cannon into the sun over previous or future charges. But then again, you have to ask who else would support the Big Six free marketeers to get to the 14 votes needed to get to sign it into existence. Newcastle United would, obviously. Nottingham Forest and Everton in a fit of pique over their points deductions, perhaps? But that even that optimistic prognosis would leave them five off being able to get it over the line.

One swallow does not a summer make, and this is all at an early enough stage for Keegan’s piece to be considered akin to mischief-making. This is one of the options that is being looked at, and it’s at just about the wildest end of the financial spectrum. There are other options available, but it is concerning that this is even on the table. It is to be hoped that this conversation isn’t the start of a conversation which results in the complete subjugation of top flight football to the wealthiest.